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Sealing Their Fate: The Twenty-two Days That Decided World War II: David Downing

As the Japanese fleet prepared to sail from Japan to Pearl Harbor, the German army was launching its final desperate assault on Moscow, while the British were planning a decisive blow against Rommel in North Africa. The British conquered the desert, the Germans succumbed to Moscow’s winter, and the Japanese awakened the sleeping giant of American might. In just three weeks, from November 17 to December 8, the course of World War II was decided and the fate of Germany and Japan was sealed.With new insight and a fresh perspective, David Downing tells the story of these crucial days, shifting the riveting narrative from snowbound Russian villages to the stormy northern Pacific, from the North African desert to Europe’s warring capitals, and from Tokyo to Washington.

Summary: Decisions for Defeat

Rating: 5

I agree with the author that the turning point of World War II came earlier than the great battles of 1942 and 1943 (Midway, El Alamein, Guadalcanal and Stalingrad) as is generally assumed. As far as the war in Europe is concerned, however, I would move it back even further to the summer of 1940. It was, in my opinion, Hitler's failure to knock England out of the war in the Battle of Britain that ultimately doomed his enterprise to defeat. It meant an inevitable invasion of "Fortress Europe" from the British Isles. Hitler's inexplicable attack on The Soviet Union in June of 1941 precipitated the disaster of a two front war that should have been avoided at all costs (although recently published documents from the Soviet archives indicate that it may well have been a preemptive strike launched to forestall a planned Soviet attack on Germany's rear.) His mad declaration of war on the United States in the wake of Pear Harbor sealed his fate.

As for the Japanese, they launched their desperate gamble on December 7, 1941 having been pushed to the wall by Roosevelt's diplomacy of escalating non-negotiable demands, which ultimately left them no choice but war or surrender (i.e. defeat without a fight). Few Japanese leaders believed that they could defeat the United States in a prolonged conflict. Their only hope was to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet (and with it America's ability to make immediate war in the western Pacific), and to bring about a negotiated settlement that would leave Japan's Far Eastern Empire intact.

It might have been a better strategy for the Japanese to join Hitler in his invasion of the Soviet Union, leaving the United States on the side lines (although F.D.R. would, no doubt, have found another way into the fight). A Japanese attack on the Soviet East could have forced Stalin to divide his forces, thus making possible a German victory, or another truce with the Soviets. This was the only eventuality that might have secured Hitler's domination of Western Europe for the foreseeable future. It certainly would have made an Anglo-American invasion of the continent vastly more difficult.

But "might have beens" are not history. History is the study of what actually happened, how and why it happened, and the long term consequences of what did happen. Fate is what we call the outcome of the decisions we make.

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Rating:
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